Reciprocity and Wage Undercutting

It is well-documented that employers refuse to hire workers who offer their services at less than the prevailing wage. The received explanation is that workers are motivated by reciprocity¾ they desire to reward kindness and punish hostility. To refuse an outsider’s under-bid is viewed as a kind choice that is met with good effort; a low wage is viewed as an insult that is met with shirking. We have developed a general theory of reciprocity which in this paper is applied to a wage-setting game played by an employer and two workers. We show that when workers are motivated by reciprocity, equilibrium behaviour accords well with the aforementioned stylized facts.Reciprocity; wage underbidding; unemployment

Some Relationships Between Evolutionary Stability Criteria in Games

The relationships between five stability criteria for evolutionary games are studies.Noncooperative games;

Price competition and market concentration: An experimental study

price competition;industrial concentration

Price Competition and Market Concentration: An Experimental Study

The classical price competition model (named after Bertrand), prescribes that in equilibrium prices are equal to marginal costs. Moreover, prices do not depend on the number of competitors. Since this outcome is not in line with real-life observations, it is known as the "Bertrand Paradox". Many theoretical problems with the original model have been considered as an explanation of the paradox in the literature. In this paper we experimentally investigate a model which is immune to the theoretical critique of the original model. We find, nevertheless, that the outcome does depend on the number of competitors: the Bertrand solution does not predict well when the number of competitors is two, but after some opportunities for learning are provided it tends to predict well when the number of competitors is three or four. A bounded rationality explanation of this is suggested.Price competition; Bertrand model; market concentration; experiment; learning

Admissibility and Common Knowledge

The implications of assuming that it is commonly known that players consider only admissible best responses are investigated.Within a states-of-the-world model where a state, for each player, determines a strategy set rather than a strategy the concept of fully permissible sets is defined.General existence is established, and a finite algorithm (eliminating strategy sets instead of strategies) is provided.The concept refines rationalizability as well as the Dekel-Fudenberg procedure, and captures a notion of forward induction.When players consider all best responses, the same framework can be used to define the concept of rationalizable sets, which characterizes rationalizability.game theory

Indirect Evolution versus Strategic Delegation: A Comparison of Two Approaches to Explaining Economic Institutions

Two major methods of explaining economic institutions, namely by strategic choices or through (indirect) evolution, are compared for the case of a homogenous quadratic duopoly market. Sellers either can provide incentives for agents to care for sales, or evolve as sellers who care for sales in addition to profits. The two approaches are conceptually quite different, yet similar in the sense that both allow certain kinds of commitment. We show that when the two models are set up in intuitively comparable ways strategic delegation does not change the market results as compared to the usual duopoly solution, while indirect evolution causes a more competitive behavior. Thus the case at hand underscores the differences between the two approaches in explaining economic institutions.Indirect evolution; strategic delgation; commitment; duopoly markets; agency theory

Discrimination by Gender and Social Distance

We examine experimentally how a person's generosity depends on the sex of that person, on the sex of the person who is the target of the generous act, and on the degree of anonymity between the interacting parties. In our data fewer men than women give non-zero amounts; men receive less than women; and less is given when subjects receive money publicly on stage than when payments are private. The results shed light on gender-related selfishness and discrimination, and suggest that it may be problematic to organize experimental findings in terms of social distance.discrimination; gender; social distance; anonymity

Procurement and Information Feedback

A government that regularly procures the services of construction companies wants to minimize its costs. The instrument it can use is the level of information feedback given to the firms in the market. Theoretically, the competition between firms is supposed to drive prices to the lowest possibility, independently of the information feedback. We design an experiment in which firms participate in a first price sealed-bid auction. Interaction takes place in 10 periods according to a random matching mechanism, and we control for the level of information feedback firms receive after each period. It turns out that when firms are informed about the losing bids in previous periods, prices are higher than the theoretical prediction. However, when firms do not receive this information prices converge towards the theoretical prediction. We suggest that aphenomenon of price signaling may be important for explaining these results.Procurement auction; experiment; information feedback; price signaling